Blowing into the Wind

I played a concert today blowing into a full gale coming off the water.  The band was distraught; not just music blowing away, but stands falling over, instruments damaged.  The infinite frustration of not being able to hear oneself, not hearing one's companions...(more)

the feeling that the music was lost, parts jangled and jumbled, everyone playing by instinct with only the will to finish well pulling us through.  What small audience there was, in front of us, surely couldn't hear, the wind was blowing all of the music away from them.

Driving home, I started thinking how like our party this concert was, discordant and scattered voices that are pissing into the wind with our pleas for restraint, reason and progressive policy in government.  Our plans, our roadmap for performance blown apart from within, and from without.  The feeling we were trying so hard, but no one was listening, and surely those who were listening were not really hearing the merit of the messages, tossed and lost in the great winds and spin of the political noise machines.

Then I turned to my husband (a designated band groupie, who has to stay and listen, but also a musician with an educated ear).  And he said that he had seldom heard the band sound that good; the miking had been perfect, and the performance was crisp and effective.

So I started thinking maybe what we were trying to achieve was not so futile, it only felt like our words were lost on the wind. That the blogworld and the meetings of Kossacks, large as YKos or small as a gathering of Kos friends at Harper's Ferry or at Baltimore, was providing us with the amplification, the way to bring our messages out and craft common themes that would resonate with our fellow citizens.  And that it was worthwhile to throw these few thoughts out on the wind.